Saddam May Attempt To Implicate Us Mark

Mark Matthews of the Baltimore Sun points out that Saddam may attempt to implicate Western powers and US political figures during the course of his war crimes trial. (Matthews tells the story of Colin Powell apologizing to the Kurds that no one spoke out about the Baath gas attacks against them in the late 1980s; Colin Powell was of course conspicuously one of those who could have but did not speak out then, because of his alliance with Saddam against Iran.)

Saddam may confirm what former CIA analysts have been telling reporters for years: that Saddam was an agent of the CIA in the 1960s; that the CIA helped him target Iraqi communists in 1963 during a brief period of Baath rule; and that when the Baath came back to power in 1968, the CIA favored Saddam’s clan over a rival Baath leader, ensuring that he was in a position to come to power. Adel Darwish has reported these allegations in his

Unholy Babylon and they have been confirmed to me by other reporters independently of Darwish.

The sort of charges Saddam could make against US officials about the 1980s and 1990s are presaged in Michael Moore’s column today.